Flexibility and other New ways of working

Flexibility and other New ways of Working…

The covid pandemic has taught us many things and one of them is the need to focus on the mental and Physical well-being of the Employee. Another one is to bring in innovation at the work place and the ability to think out of the box and thinking without any box as well. 

It is important to explore as to what employees are dealing within their daily lives, what impact that is having on them and what really matters to them? Is it complete Work From Home routine, or back to Work from office premises or a Hybrid work culture, 4 days workweek or an extra week’s leaves for mental wellbeing? Perhaps it is their family and what it means to sustain a family unit and to spend quality time with them? Or perhaps it is about progressing at work, delivering good performance,meeting stringent and tough challenges, and achieving career progression? What are they really contending with in their day to day lives as they balance the realities of being a full- fledged holistic person and being a productive, engaged employee?

The truth is that what matters to employees has shifted dramatically. Therefore, their expectations of the organizations they work for have also shifted. Now, employees want work to be part of their lives, but not consume it. They want the jobs they do to create a sense of purpose and meaning for them. They are also looking for a way to self-actualise. This means to meet some of their higher goals and aspirations.

Employees are no longer happy to just be part of the crowd or to  just be a number in an organizational population. The employees are no longer worried about losing their jobs as there are many options available for most of them, be it in big corporates who have started their hiring process with a bang or in the various startups or unicorns or decacorns. In fact, it is the various startups and unicorns who have started thinking Out of the Box and changing the rules of employee engagement. There are many new employment rules challenges which are coming up as part of Labour Code but many Learning organizations have already started making changes by bringing in Flexibility in the way, employees are hired, retained, paid or engaged. They call it New ways of working… New nomenclatures and substitutes for the HR department are being introduced… We now have Employee Experience as one of them, People Success being another.

Work-life balance

Work-life balance is about the division of time between work and personal activities. How much time is spent doing work and how much of it is own time for personal activities? However, the concept of balance is more than just  accounting for time. Work-life balance is also about emotional and psychological investment. What this means is that some people's whole happiness and sense of balance is wrapped up in the job they do. They are over-invested in their work and they are under-invested in other aspects of their lives. This is not a healthy dynamic. Balance is about prioritizing both your work and your personal life and making sure that there is a level of balance between the two,both in terms of time and the level of emotional investment. The goal is to achieve some kind of optimization between these two. We know that people have many needs. They are complex beings, and if you are only spending your time, energy, and effortin one place, you are not going to meet the holistic and multi-dimensional needs you have as a whole person. Work cannot meet every need you have, and too much focus on work is unhealthy. Without a balance, your life will become one-sided and that compromises other aspects of your life. This will have physical,psychological, and emotional repercussions. Other aspects of your life will suffer because all your energy, time and effort only go into a narrow slice of life. Happy, healthy employees need a balance, and we know that happy and healthy employeesmean better performance and better profits for organizations in the long term.

A lot of the thinking around work-life balance has shifted and now the new narrative is more about work-life integration. Thismeans trying to mesh work and personal time together so that people engage in work in a much more holistic and blendedway. It becomes integrated into how they live their lives, with less delineated separation between a working life and a personallife. This holds true for both WFH and Hybrid cultures. Forward looking organizations are looking to engage their employees as whole people, they acknowledge and recognize that people do not leave their personal lives at the door when theycome to work.

Organisational responses to employee needs

The focus is shifting to Employee wellness. The Organizations look at how employees are feeling physically, emotionally, how they are behaving and the way they are living their lives. Ultimately, they try and support overall wellness by investing ina range of programs and initiatives that support employee wellbeing. They will also evaluate their office set-up to ensureergonomically appropriate workspaces and manage the stress levels of their people. Progressive organizations areencouraging employees to be healthy. Their leaders are leading by example, demonstrating what a holistic approach towellness for staff really looks like.

Next, some companies are now trying to support working parents. There is an acknowledgment of the challenges of being a working parent, especially when both parents are working. Some forward-thinking organizations are finding ways to support and enable employees with family responsibilities. This could be things like providing childcare benefits or early learning centers at work so that people can actually physically bring their children to work and leave them in a place of safety, as well as implementing child friendly time policies. This means allowing people who have family responsibilities, a level of flexibility into how much time they spend physically at theoffice versus at home with their children.

But not everybody has children, and so progressive organizations understand that they need to meet the expectations ofemployees who perhaps do not have families. Some employees are without children, or even any kind of family anchor.These employees are increasingly isolated and lonely. Many organizations understand that they need to meet the human need to associate and to belong to something bigger for some of their employees.

Workplaces are looking to provide social opportunities and a sense of community for staff, which helps employees whodo not have families or strong social units anchor themselves in the social world. Companies are actively finding ways for employees to socially congregate and feel a sense of family and belonging and satisfy their emotional needs. This is interesting because you see how some organizations are trying to deal with employees on both sides of the spectrum; thosewho have family responsibilities and those who have none.

Another organizational response to shifting employee expectations and increasing life demands is the provision of logistical support. For most people, commuting is time consuming and frustrating. This is especially true in metros.Commuting is also a highly unproductive time for employees. They spend a lot of time simply travelling to and from work, andthat becomes  wasted or ‘dead’ time. Commuting is also stressful and anxiety provoking, and organizations realize that when an employee has to go through a stressful experience just to get to work, they are unlikely to get the best out of them performance wise once they actually start working. That is why WFH or a Hybrid culture can actually be beneficial. Covid has taught us that most of the jobs can be handled this way. Technology of course has to play an important role in this and that’s why Tech companies or those having strong Tech support can function in an Online mode. Others have to find a hybrid model to support the employees without disturbing the Work / output. 

Many organizations are looking for ways to ease this burden and to make life more convenient and easier for their people byproviding some logistical support. How could they do this? Here are some examples:

·       They might offer shuttle or commuter services. 

·       Some companies are offering ways, especially through technology, to facilitate car sharing services where employeescan ride with each other. This makes things more economical in terms of the cost of petrol, as well as moreconvenient. It also promotes colleague bonding and allows people to get to know each other who perhaps are not inthe same team.

·       Allowing people to work in times that enable them to avoid rush hour is another way some companies are assistingemployees to navigate daily demands. This means making it acceptable for employees to either come in to work alittle bit later or leave a little bit earlier. It could mean allowing some employees to work at night so that they do nothave to be part of the rat race at all.

·       A new concept is split days, and this is another way to reduce commuting. It means allowing people to work at homeon some days and then coming to the office on other days. The key is to alternate the schedule across the team sothat employees have an opportunity to avoid commuter pressures, but on a fair basis. It also helps to dissipate theoverall number of people in that commuter rush on any given day.

Smart companies are thinking of out of the box ways to reward employees. 

They understand that not all employees want to be rewarded the same way because they have different needs, and they are juggling different demands. Some of the typical ways in which companies reward people are a promotion or more money either through some kind of bonus or a salary increase. 

However, progressive organizations realize that you need to incentivize people with reward that has a high valency.Valency means it has a high value to employee; it is very impactful and meaningful to them. And of course, that reward’svalency will be different for different people depending on their needs. Many organizations are coming up with new reward practices that really speak to the needs and expectations of their employees. So, for example, if you are a working mother,then perhaps what would feel like a really valuable reward to you for good performance is extra money for child support or access to specialized education for your child, or perhaps some extra time off that you can spend at home. The idea is that organizations who understand that life is challenging in different ways for their employees will think about a range ofreward opportunities that really speak to the wide spectrum of employees. But perhaps the best way in which companies are meeting the shifting expectations of employees and supporting thedemands of modern-day employees is by introducing different ways of working. They are asking themselves ‘how can ouremployees do the same job but in a different way? And how can they do it in a way that will make their lives easier and create greater levels of convenience and better work-life integration? How can we enable and support that work-lifebalance?

New ways of working

Traditionally, work was characterized by 9am to 5pm workdays. Employees started at a point in the morning and workedthroughout the day, until the job was finished in the late afternoon. Most employees worked five days a week, some even 6 days a week typically Monday to Friday. They traditionally had a designated place of work, a place like an office or a factory. And they had very specific assigned tasks or responsibilities that management would monitor and make sure that theyperformed. Now, alternative ways of working are becoming a way in which organizations help their employees meet theirneeds, and also have an organizational benefit.  Below are some examples of ‘new ways of working’.

Working less time

Organizations are offering roles with reduced hours. Some employees simply want to work less and of course, their personaleconomic realities allow for this. A company is not going to pay somebody a fulltime salary if they are not doing a fulltime job,but many employees can survive on less money and would prefer to have more time to dedicate to something other than work. Working less is particularly valuable in technology enabled industries where you are looking for high levels of innovation,and smart new ideas.

Non-traditional hours

Next, one of the new ways of working is offering non-traditional hours. Some employees prefer working at unconventionaltime. Offer flexi Timings - They do not want to work 9:00 to 5:00. They might prefer to come in really early, or to start later andwork later into the evening. This is called time splitting, and it is a way of creating flexibility. It could also mean that employeeswork certain hours upfront in the day. Then they have a break and then later, they come back to work for a second slot. Of course, depending on  their home demands and their lifestyle, this could suit some people better than others.

Reduction of management control

Reducing levels of management control over work is a new way of working. Progressive organizations are rethinking the roleof management. They are no longer need them to just monitor, oversight and effectively ‘police’ employees. They arechallenging the traditional role of management and rather asking their managers to focus on supporting employees, doingquality assurance work, facilitating collaboration within teams and coaching employees to deliver a better output. They arealso looking at their managers to incentivize innovation and create the freedom for employees to come up with new ways ofdoing things effectively. When you reduce the level of management control, you enable a level of employee freedom. And so, you need a new kind of manager, one who is comfortable with that shift in power dynamics and having less control andauthority.

Location Choice

This is the idea that you do not need one designated place of work. The idea of a fixed office or workspace is becoming very outdated, except of course in factories or production lines where you need the physical hand-off of a product from oneemployee to another. In a true knowledge economy where people are being paid for their intellectual property, their skill, andtheir acumen, it should not really matter where they work from. And in fact, employees expect to be able to work from a variety of places, enabled and supported by smart technology. Choice of location – WFH or any other place gives the employees the ability to choose where they work from and enabling   them to balance their lifestyle.

Job sharing

Another flexible way of working is the idea of job sharing. Not every person requires full time employment. Especially in dualincome households where one person might be a full-time worker, and so the other person does not need to be earning a full-time salary. Innovative organizations are offering job sharing which is effectively offering a full-time role which is then sharedbetween two employees. This has benefits for both the employee and the organization; the employee gets to do a job whichthey find rewarding and interesting and get paid for their contribution, and the organization gets the work they need delivered.Utilising two people in one role actually enables the benefits of ‘two heads’ working on the same problem, which often meansbetter ideas and better delivery. Clearly, overseeing job sharing does ask more of management because the person toperformance output ratio is no longer one to one, it is actually a ratio of two to one. Each employee will have different strengthsand their own way of working, and so it requires high levels of management skill and maturity. 

Focus on output-based performance management.

A very important new working practice is an absolute focus on output performance measurement. This means that you nolonger measure how much time somebody is spending on a job. That idea is outdated and in fact, it incentivizes people totake longer, as opposed to being efficient and productive. Performance management should be output based. Companiesunderstand that measuring what people are actually delivering, not how long it takes them to do the job, puts the focus on theright behavior. Progressive organizations are assessing performance based on what somebody has actually produced,delivered, and achieved, and they are not so worried about how they achieve that or how long it took them. The focus is noton effort, input or time spent. It is on output and performance. That gives employees the freedom to do the job the way theysee fit, as long as they are producing what the organization requires.

Specialist in-sourcing

The idea of specialist in-sourcing is a new practice in organizations. It means only pulling in certain kinds of skills and abilities, as and when they are needed in the organization, on a short-term basis. Specialized roles are vital, but because they are very narrowly focused, often organizations do not need them all the time. The organization might need somebody to do a very specific, highly specialized kind of work that not a lot of people can do, but they need it that skill in a short burst oron specific project. Full time hires for specialist roles are making less and less sense because there is not enough for that person to do all the time, but in the other hand, the skill is in high demand and so you do not want to suddenly need it and not have it. So, on demand in-sourcing of specialists creates a dual benefit. It means that companies can get hold of specialist skills as and when they need them. They can in-source them for that specific point in time on that specific project. It also allows thespecialists to be employed as freelancers or consultants in the market and move from job to job, giving their skills andexpertise to different organizations as when they need them. This creates flexibility and premium salary earning potential for the specialist.

Radical transparency

Another idea which is really changing the way organizations operate is this concept of a radical transparency. This is the idea that management no longer need to be secretive or hoarding of information, they can actually be very transparent and share information with the whole organization.  The question is, why can’t employees have access to all the company information? Why does some information have to be classified as ‘management information’ and kept separate from employees? This includes things like salary bills,performance assessment data, production schedules and work distribution information.

Radical transparency says companies should make all information available to everybody in the in the organization because full transparency empowers and motivates people. It creates an adult culture where nothing is kept secret from others because of their level or rank. It forces mature and ground-breaking conversations, because if everybody has access to all the information that is relevant in the organization, it drives them to have mature conversations and to adopt adult behavior.

How are these new ways of working benefitting organisations?

Clearly the practices above benefit the individual employee, but how are all these progressive ideas actually benefiting theorganization? 

Firstly, it improves levels of employee engagement. higher levels of engagement create a willingness in employees to dip into discretionary effort, and that gives companies the rocket fuel they need for higher levels of performance. This results inbetter levels of productivity for the organization, the ability to produce more and the enablement of ingenuity and innovation. Employees who feel that there is a freedom and a new progressive way of being managed are likely to innovatemore and be more creative in the way they do things. And lastly, and very importantly, new ways of working and progressiveworking practices enhance the employee value proposition (EVP) of the organization.

Conclusion

As the world gets more demanding and complex for employees, it stands to reason that their expectations and needs fromtheir employer will adjust and change. Forward thinking companies understand that it makes sense for them to offer new, flexible, and alternative ways of working where it is possible. This dynamic does not just make employee lives easier. They also benefit the organization through higher levels of productivity, greater levels of employee engagement, an enhanced employee value proposition, and a more adult evolved organizational culture.

#HumanResources #HR #CareerChoices #Worklifebalance #flexibility #TransformationalHR #Career #employee #employer #Newwaysofworking #forwardlooking

References 

Adeccogroup.com. 2020. Latest Insights. 

Thompson, P., n.d. New Ways Of Working In The Company Of The Future | 

• Del Marmol, L., 2021. Organizational Culture Theory: Things To Know And How To Use It In The Workplace - World Of Digits - Blog.